Self-made hill-climb champion, permanent assignments as a race engineer and focus on the big goal: a conversation about female power that motorsport has not seen for a long time.

This interview first appeared in Motorsport aktuell (MSA) 44/2024 on October 9, 2024.
Interview: Reiner Kuhn

We have two congratulations, starting with the title win in the KW Berg Cup. How great is the joy?

It’s simply huge! I come from a real hill climb family. After my father had a serious accident, we rebuilt the car together and I took the wheel. As an engineer, I now know what I need to be fast. Now I’m the youngest winner of all time – a dream!

Even as the first woman …

That’s nice too, of course, but it’s not important to me. When I start, I want to win, whether it’s against a man or a woman. And let’s be honest: when we have a helmet on, you can’t tell the difference anyway (laughs).

Now you are also causing a sensation in rallying. With just a single rally under your belt, you traveled to the WRC promoter’s evaluation, made the cut and are now competing in the Rally Central Europe in a Ford Fiesta Rally3. How does that work?

It’s crazy. I had to sleep on it for a night before I could really realize it. I really didn’t think I would be selected. The standard was really high. There were so many girls with so much more rally experience. I’m just over the moon, after all, rallying has always been my big dream.

So why not earlier?

Because we can’t afford it. I work as a systems engineer at ZF and also as a race engineer in the GT sector at weekends to earn the money for our car and the races. Like the competition, there’s a lot of high-tech under the skin of our Golf. The competition is really high. We have to change a lot of things between races, right down to the gear ratios. But the budgets you need in rallying are even higher. But as I said, rallying has always been my dream. I watched the Rally Germany as a child and helped out in the service park there as a teenager. The fact that I will now be competing in a WRC event myself is the greatest thing for me.

How do you prepare for a World Cup start as a novice?

When friends told me about the sighting, I immediately started working more intensively on taking notes of the route. So far, I’ve only done something similar to a route note at the longest European hill climb race in Italy (18 kilometers). At my very first rally in the ADAC Opel Electric Cup, I did amazingly well and was on the ball right from the start. When warming up the tires and brakes, I benefit from my experience at the hill climbs, where I have a maximum of 200 meters from the tent to the starting line in my 300 hp front-wheel drive car. I’m also currently spending a lot of time on the simulator and watching videos. But my new environment is at least as important.

What does that look like?

Jara Hain, a top co-pilot, has been at my side for a few weeks now. We get on really well and prepare together.

How exactly?

It feels like I’m working 24/7. Even if my budget is used up at the end of the season, I have rented a Ford Fiesta Rally3 from PSH Motorsport for a short test and the fall rally in Austria on the Saturday before the WRC round – Jara’s and my first start together and my second rally ever. I only have one plan A and want to show everyone that we can do it. If it goes on after that, I’ll go crazy for a bit (laughs). And when I’m clear again, I want to do everything I can to prepare myself just as consistently for driving on loose surfaces. I’ve already tasted blood at the promoter sighting and I’m determined to show that I can do it on gravel too.